


Lightning Strikes

by idelthoughts



Series: Mortinez Fics [9]
Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family, Fluff, Gen, Henry's 236th Birthday, Romance, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 12:03:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4828457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a look in Henry's eyes these days--a joy, a contentment--that Abe hasn't seen for a long time.  He's missed this part of his dad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lightning Strikes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArgylePirateWD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgylePirateWD/gifts).



> For argylepiratewd, on the occasion of Henry Morgan's 236th birthday. I hope you like it! <3

Abe had the newspaper as a carefully positioned blind between him and the kitchen, so that he could look over—but not _look_ like he was looking over.  He was fairly certain what he was witnessing would stop if they noticed him, and damned if he wanted to interrupt.  
  
Jo had dropped Henry off at the door at two in the morning after an evening crime scene had kept them much longer than expected.  Henry had offered Jo the spare bedroom, since Jo was all but falling asleep at the wheel.  Or so Abe had been told when Jo had appeared for breakfast this morning.    
  
Henry’s tone had stressed, bolded, and underlined the story to say that all propriety had been maintained and that there was nothing to see here.  His stiff back and warning look, however, said that all that properness was only because Henry was an emotionally constipated idiot who was hell-bent on resisting the inevitable.  
  
“Can I get you a hair shirt to go with your vow of chastity?” Abe had asked.  
  
Henry’s look had been sour enough to make a lemon seem sweet, but a short sleep always had made Henry temperamental, and so Abe cut him some slack.  
  
However, he’d thrown a few more eggs in the pan before Jo could bolt out the door, telling her she had to stay or they’d go to waste, because Henry wasn’t going to get off quite that easy.  Didn’t take much to twist her rubber arm, and she sat down to join them, then declaring she’d do the clean-up.  Henry had, with all his old-fashioned gentlemanly attitude brought to bear, insisted he would help.  The two of them had set to tidying the kitchen.  
  
Abe, settled in ostensibly to review the obituaries, was instead watching something he hadn’t seen in a good forty years.  
  
Jo gave Henry a good shove with her hip when he jostled close to her as he reached for a wet plate. Henry chuckled, and said something Abe couldn’t make out from his spot in the living room.  Jo flicked water at Henry, catching him in the face.  Henry blinked in surprise, making a loud and offended noise.  Jo laughed, and when her attention returned to the soapy water, Henry narrowed his eyes.    
  
That was it, right there—that gleam.  That had disappeared from Henry’s eyes a long time ago.  Having glanced up at just the right time to see it, Abe couldn’t look away.  
  
Henry finished drying the dish in his hands with careful, deliberate movements.  He put it on the stack of plates, then dried his hands and set down the towel down.  The newspaper sagged slightly in Abe’s grip, drooping.  
  
Henry snagged Jo by the waist and tickled her.  
  
She squealed loudly in surprise, trying to twist away, but Henry gave chase with a victorious cry.  Water splashed from Jo’s wet hands as she wriggled away, shrieking with indignant laughter.  Henry relented, his own laughter joyful and unguarded, and he steadied Jo on her feet.  She settled comfortably into his arms, giving him hell with a wide smile on her face as he apologized, blatantly not sorry at all.  
  
On Abigail’s fiftieth birthday, between cleaning up dinner and settling in for a nice quiet evening together, Henry had swept Abigail into his arms and whirled her around, both of them laughing and happy.  Henry had always done that, been free with his playful affection.  Just for the hell of it, because he had so much love he couldn’t keep it in, didn’t have enough words to say it all—not a moment went by that he let Abigail forget how much he cared, great big sap that he was.  
  
Abe, fresh from a divorce and wondering how the hell two people could be so lucky as to find someone who made them that happy, had stopped to watch through the doorway.  Thirty years of marriage, and they’d still been so much in love.  That kind of warm consistency from them, that bedrock foundation, had slapped a patch on his cynical broken heart.  His own romantic life might have been a disaster, but Abe was never short of love.  
  
In the kitchen, here and now, Henry and Jo quieted, humour falling to the wayside as they noted their position, Jo’s hands on Henry’s chest and Henry’s arms around her, and Abe abruptly went from nosy observer to third wheel.  
  
Even as an adult, there were some things in his dad’s life that Abe didn’t need to see.  
  
He shook the newspaper and lifted it, clearing his throat conspicuously.  From the kitchen, the soft sounds of shuffled feet and then the noises of dishes being washed, dried, and put away.  
  
Abe continued his survey of the obituaries—and there were a few choice estate sales he needed to put on his calendar—until he heard his name called.  Dropping the paper to his lap, he saw Jo with her coat on standing near the top of the stairs.  
  
“I’m on my way,” she said, smiling.  “Thanks for breakfast.”  
  
“No problem.  Don’t be a stranger.”  
  
“I won’t,” she promised, shooting a quick glance towards Henry.  “Um, yeah.  I can see myself out.  See you Monday, Henry.”  
  
Henry, turning his sleeves after having rolled them up for the dishes, nodded politely.  
  
“Have a good weekend, Detective.”  
  
Jo went down the stairs, and Henry finished unrolling his sleeves and buttoning the cuffs.  
  
“‘Have a good weekend, Detective,’” Abe echoed, imitating Henry’s accent.  Benefit of being raised by two Brits—he had a flawless grasp of English vowels when he wanted.  “Jeez, Henry.”  
  
“What?”  Henry frowned at him.  
  
“When you reach the ‘kissing in the kitchen’ stage of a relationship, I think you can safely assume you’re on a first name basis.”  
  
Henry adjusted his cuffs, brushing at the few wrinkles in the sleeve fabric.  He gave a small sheepish chuckle.  
  
“Yes, I suppose so.  Sorry, Abe.”  
  
“Nah,”  Abe said, folding the newspaper closed and trading it for the arts section on the coffee table.  “Just give me a heads up next time, I’ll take myself out for breakfast.  I’ve kicked you out enough, about time you repay the favour.”  
  
“Abe,” Henry said, with the fatherly warning tone he could still dredge up after all these years.  “That’s hardly necessary.  We’re not… not that.”  
  
“Not yet,” Abe shot back.  “Not that I can figure out what you’re waiting for,” he added, muttering it quietly.  
  
Henry rolled his eyes and snatched up the current events section, taking it to his chair and settling himself.  
  
“Fairly obvious, I should think.”  
  
Abe gave up any pretense of interest in the paper and let it drop to his lap, the newsprint crinkling loudly.  
  
“For god’s sake, Henry.  She knows, she’s fine with it, she’s interested.  What more do you want?”  
  
Henry avoided Abe’s question as long as he could, but Abe let the silence hang, forcing Henry to respond. Henry’s chest expanded as he drew in a large breath, then let it out in a loud gust.  
  
“We’ve been over this, Abe.  It’s well and good that she knows about my condition, but it’s not real to her.  She can’t possibly understand.  Not until she sees it, lives with the reality of it.  What would she think in ten years?  Twenty?  _That’s_ when it sets in, that I’m still thirty-five, standing still while the rest of the world has carried on as normal.”  
  
Henry’s hands cut the air with sharp emphasis as he spoke, his expression reshaping into a familiar set—eyebrows drawn, the corners of his mouth turned down in a frown, faint lines of stress creasing the corners of his eyes.    
  
Abe scowled at him, suddenly fed up.  
  
“Henry,” he snapped.  “You’re finally happy.  Can’t you just accept that?”  
  
That silenced Henry abruptly.  He dropped his hand into his lap and looked at Abe in wide-eyed surprise over the sharp tone.  Abe stood up and tossed the paper on the table.  He hadn’t meant to get upset.  
  
“Abe, what’s wrong?”  
  
Abe rubbed a hand across his brow before he relented.  Henry’s soft, concerned tone pulled it out of him, as it always did.  
  
“I dunno.  I guess I missed seeing you like this.  _This_ is who I think of as my dad, you know? You and mom were so happy.  _You_ were happy.  If you can find one person in life who makes you that happy, you count yourself lucky.  Two?  Hell, Henry.  I don’t care if you’ve lived a dozen lifetimes, you don’t take that for granted—and you sure don’t let it slide by.”  
  
Henry blinked rapidly, obviously taken aback by the unexpected tirade, and Abe pulled off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose.  Well, that had sure come out of nowhere.  A little embarrassing to go off on his dad at this age, but damned if Henry didn’t drive him a little nutty sometimes, with his mile-wide streak of ascetic martyrdom.  
  
“Sorry,” he grunted.  “You’re not replacing mom, you know.  We finally got to say goodbye to her, and she’s laid to rest.  She’d have wanted you to live, not just exist.”  
  
Henry was silent, his gaze unfocused, and Abe found he had nothing else to say.  He turned and headed for the stairs, deciding that now was as good a time as any to work on reconciling the month-end books for the store.  No point continuing this.  Henry would live as Henry lived, and there was certainly nothing Abe could do about it.    
  
  
***  
  
  
They gave each other some space over the afternoon, and Abe gave his buddy Morty a call and dragged him out to see a movie, just to get out of the house.  Good old avoidance never did anyone any harm.  
  
The next day Abe continued to work on the books, and he was startled by a plate sliding onto the desk at his side.  He looked up to find a roast beef sandwich with pickles on the side, and Henry looking down at him with amused disapproval.  
  
“It’s nearly four in the afternoon, and you’ve not had lunch,” he chastised gently.  
  
Abe straightened and his back crackled.  He groaned, stretching, and threw down his pen on the desk.  
  
“Time got away from me,” he said.  “Thanks.”  
  
“Not a problem.”  Henry leaned down and kissed Abe on the head.  “I’ll be out this evening.”  
  
“Where are you off to?”  
  
Henry paused, then tucked his hands in his trouser pockets, trying for nonchalant and failing.    
  
“I’ve invited Jo out for dinner.”  
  
There was the smallest hesitation before Jo’s name, and Abe leaned back in his chair.  Henry looked like he was making an effort to not acknowledge that they both knew he’d almost called her _Detective Martinez_ , but Abe was too amused to hide it.  
  
“Well, isn’t that nice,” he said.  
  
“Yes, thank you, Abe,” Henry said, his tone bone-dry. “You continue to have the subtlety of a brass band.”  
  
“Leave a tie on the doorknob this time,” Abe said.  
  
“Abraham!” Henry said sharply, and Abe chuckled, waving him off.  
  
“Okay, okay.  Have a good time.”  
  
Henry hovered awkwardly for a moment, looking like he wasn’t quite certain what to do with himself, and then he nodded briskly.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Abe watched Henry go and disappear upstairs, presumably to spend the next few hours preening and fussing over his appearance.  
  
Later on, Henry strode through the shop on his way out.  There was a lightness to his step and he was humming under his breath as he buttoned his coat as he walked.  He wished Abe a cheery goodnight as he exited through the shop door.    
  
It took a while, but eventually Abe got back to work, finding himself smiling stupidly as he calculated figures in the ledger.  
  
It was good to have his dad back.


End file.
